Religious views of Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Great Mathematician

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Gauss believed in God. Potential evidence that Gauss believed in God comes from his response after solving a problem that had previously defeated him: "Finally, two days ago, I succeeded—not on account of my hard efforts, but by the grace of the Lord."

One of his biographers, described Gauss's religious views as follows:

For him science was the means of exposing the immortal nucleus of the
human soul. In the days of his full strength, it furnished him recreation
and, by the prospects which it opened up to him, gave consolation. Toward
the end of his life, it brought him confidence.

Gauss's God was not a cold and distant figment of metaphysics, nor a
distorted caricature of embittered theology.

Gauss believed that a life worthily spent here on earth is the best, the
only, preparation for heaven.

Religion is not a question of literature, but of life. God's revelation
is continuous, not contained in tablets of stone or sacred parchment.
Gauss believed the unshakeable idea of personal continuance after death, the
firm belief in a last regulator of things, in an eternal, just, omniscient,
omnipotent God, formed the basis of his religious life, which harmonized
completely with his scientific research.

Gauss's religious consciousness was based on an insatiable thirst for
truth and a deep feeling of justice extending to intellectual as well as
material goods.

He conceived spiritual life in the whole universe as a great system of
law penetrated by eternal truth, and from this source he gained the firm
confidence that death does not end all.

Gauss declared he firmly believed in the afterlife, and saw spirituality
as something essentially important for human beings.[40] He was quoted
stating: "The world would be nonsense, the whole creation an absurdity
without immortality,"

Gauss strongly upheld religious tolerance, believing "that one is not
justified in disturbing another's religious belief, in which they find
consolation for earthly sorrows in time of trouble."

When his son Eugene announced that he wanted to become a Christian
missionary, Gauss approved of this, saying that regardless of the problems
within religious organizations, missionary work was "a highly honorable"
task.